The ESP Group is a multi-disciplined smart services business broken down into a variety of different divisions. They include customer service at Journeycall, smart technology at Systex, RFID at RFIDentic and design at Viaqqio.

With a broad variety of outsourcing options for businesses, the firm has clients including Transport for London (TfL), London Councils, the Scottish government and the Association of Train Operating Companies.

ESP showed its value when it secured a contract with TfL through Journeycall back in 2006 – a deal that was renewed in 2011. The company was brought in to support the Oyster Card, providing the call centre staff needed to help talk customers through any difficulties, carrying out sales and refunds, and more.

The firm explained: “Seasonal peaks in the service mean that activity levels can increase by as much as 30 per cent which can be challenging to meet high SLA targets for answering calls and card fulfilment and despatch within 24 hours.

“Journeycall has a highly skilled in-house training team and a group of team leaders who deliver a comprehensive training and mentoring programme to all our people. We empower our frontline agents to use their skills and knowledge to deal with multiple enquiry types without scripts, and to meaningfully handle every individual call to the complete satisfaction of the customer.”

The team has processed around 500,000 Oyster calls annually since the contract was secured. In 2012, Journeycall was signed up for an additional service to support travel planning for passengers visiting the Olympics and Paralympics.

Djamila Guernou, head of contact centre operations, TfL, said: “Journeycall consistently demonstrate a ‘can do’ attitude when faced with a new challenge. Their quick response to a changing environment enables TfL customer services to deliver its vision for customers at a pace which would not have been possible without a supplier such as Journeycall.

“Their openness to dialogue for improvements and changes make them a flexible partner to work with. Testimony to this is Tfl’s recent decision to increase the scope of work currently delivered by Journeycall.”

Considering that’s just one area of ESP, it’s no surprise the company has a CAGR of 109.77 and a turnover of £34.5m. Other numbers ESP can shout about include processing £50m worth of online transactions each years and managing 12m customer accounts daily.

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About Author

Zen Terrelonge is the deputy editor of Real Business, specialising in media, innovation, technology and the digital sector. A media professional with eight years worth of experience he has worked for both startup and established publications.